WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge shaved seven months off a Texas Three Percenter’s 87-month sentence on Friday, who was the first rioter to be imprisoned for his role in the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Guy Reffitt to a new prison term of six years and eight months, part of a recent string of resentencings federal judges have presided over after the Supreme Court narrowed a staple felony charge in the Jan. 6 prosecutions.
According to Justice Department prosecutors, Reffitt came to the Capitol armed with a holstered handgun, zip-tie handcuffs, body armor and a helmet equipped with a video camera while he helped storm the West Front of the building.
Reffitt expressed little remorse in a statement to Friedrich, a Donald Trump appointee, and said that he was “in his feelings” and upset by the “lies and craziness” he saw in the government’s description of the mob violence on Jan. 6.
“I was not there to take over no government,” Reffitt said. “I love this country.”
Friedrich did not find Reffitt’s statements persuasive.
“No one has a problem with your feelings,” Friedrich said. “It’s the actions you took with your feelings.”
Reffitt was convicted at trial in March 2022 on five counts, obstruction of an official proceeding, being unlawfully present on Capitol grounds while armed with a firearm, transporting firearms during a civil disorder, interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder and obstruction of justice.
The Justice Department moved to dismiss his obstruction of an official proceeding conviction following the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Fischer v. United States in June, requiring Friedrich to reevaluate the sentence.
Before marching toward the Capitol building, Reffitt told fellow Texas Three Percenters and supporters at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that his goal was to take over the Capitol by physically removing lawmakers like then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
According to prosecutors, Reffitt told the group he planned to drag Pelosi out by her ankles with her head “hitting every step” on the way out.
Reffitt was one of the first rioters to rush U.S. Capitol Police officers at the West Front of the building, urging the crowd behind him to follow suit before being hit with pepper spray and retreating.
After Jan. 6, Reffitt threatened his children to keep them from turning him into the FBI, telling his then 18-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter that if they did, they would be traitors “and traitors get shot,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memo.
Reffitt’s daughter wrote Friedrich a letter explaining that her father’s feelings of being “cast aside and marginalized “ led him to believe fully in Trump.
“I could really see how my fathers [sic] ego and personality fell to his knees when President Trump spoke, you could tell he listened to Trump’s words as if he was really truly speaking to him … Constantly feeding polarizing racial thought,” she wrote.
Reffitt, a leader of the Texas chapter of the far-right militia group, instructed fellow Three Percenters to delete any evidence from their devices after Jan. 6, warning them to be prepared as “the shit is now hitting the fan.”
Reffitt’s resentencing comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that Title 18 U.S. Code Section 1512(c)(2) must be narrowly tailored to explicit document destruction in regard to the Capitol riot.
The question before the court centered on the scope of an “otherwise” clause between two subsections in Title 18 U.S. Code Section 1512, which extends the statute’s covered conduct from document destruction to anything that “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding.”
Looming in the background of recent Jan. 6 cases in Washington is Trump’s recent electoral victory and his campaign promises to pardon certain Jan. 6 defendants.
High-profile defendants, such as former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio, have already positioned themselves as potential recipients. Trump’s campaign has only indicated it would consider pardons on a “case-by-case basis.”
According to the Justice Department’s most recent monthly update on the Capitol riot cases released in November, 1,561 individuals have been charged in connection with the riot. In the 46 months since Jan. 6, 1,028 of those defendants have been sentenced; 645 got prison terms and 143 will or have spent their terms in home detention.
